MSN Live To Pay You To Search
In a move the reeks of desperation, Microsoft has decided to start paying people to click on ads and subsequently make a purchase. Year over year, MSN Live continues to lose market share to the Googleplex so it is looking for anything to start getting people to get familiar and actually use Live.com.
They have partherships with about 700 advertisers that sell their own physical goods, like TV’s and tube socks. That agreement allows the advertisers to pay on a % of sale basis so that there is no upfront costs whatsoever. People using Live.com as their main search engine will get rebated a portion of what they spent with one of those advertisers.
This all sounds good on the surface until you realize one thing. People were using Google because the search results were just better! There have been countless attempts trying to share the wealth with searchers. I bet hardly anyone remembers iWin or iWon and their deceased brethren.
I do believe that this will provide a temporary bump for Live.com usage but the long term outlook isn’t good as most searches are research driven at first. Will people even remember Live.com’s offering when they are ready to buy? Not likely. Still, it will be interesting to see how this round of incentivised search will play out.
Here are some other views around the web:
- Microsoft drops Pay Per Click - goes right to pay per performance - Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) unveiled plans Wednesday to entice advertisers and users of its search engine with cash-back savings on online purchases, launching a site called Live Search cashback. The new site is ostensibly a product search …
- Microsoft To Pay Users Who Buy After Using Search Engine - Boston (dbTechno) - Microsoft has announced a new “cashback” service which will pay users who buy products they find by using the Windows Live search engine. The new program is called Windows Live Search cashback, and is an attempt by …
- Microsoft to pay you to search? - Microsoft Corp. hopes to make gains on Google Inc. in the lucrative business of Internet search through a new service that pays consumers who buy items they find through the software company’s search service. …
- Microsoft to pay users to search - Under the model, coined Live Search CashBack, an advertiser determines the cost it is willing to pay to sell a particular product via Live Search, a typical cost-per-acquisition pricing model. But instead of Microsoft getting the money …
- Microsoft Will Pay You To Use Live Search - Microsoft will pay you to use their Live Search. Well… sort of. Today Microsoft unveiled a new incentive to use their Live Search for your online shopping search needs: cash back. The big M will pay you cash back from purchases you make …
- Desperate Move? Microsoft Will Pay You To Use Its Search Engine - It appears Microsoft is so desperate, it’ll actually pay you to use its search engine. Which in all honesty might be a good gambit: I’m not sure I remembered that Microsoft actually had a search engine. Amid all the hubbub…
Tags: google, microsoft, msn live, news, search
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